Lived in France for 3 years, worked as an English teacher. Now I've changed directions and will be starting life over in the US. These are my adventures...

Monday, March 9, 2009

Back to Work...and my Normandy Vacation!

Allo everyone! So, ça y est, vacation is over! Back to teaching the darling children which I'm not too excited about but in a way it's a good thing. I'll be occupied again with a normal routine and I'll avoid spending money out of boredom. Last week was the Besançon - Normandy road trip and I had a great time. We ended up cutting Versailles out of the plan because we didn't have enough time and I was out of money. We divided up our week by spending two days in Normandy, and two days in Rennes, Brittany at Christophe's friend's apartment. The remaining two days were used as travel time. Since we had a very limited time to visit the region, we picked a only a handful to sites to visit.

First on the list was Deauville, home of the annual American film festival and the location of the film "Un Homme, Une Femme". It was a very classy city and a little too up-ity for me. We got to walk along the beach and the famous boardwalk.Next city we visited was Caen. We didn't get to spend too much time in the city itself but we took a brief tour of the center. What we really got to see was the Caen Memorial Museum, a World War II museum dedicated to the memory of the French liberation by the American and British troops. There was a vast collection of American war equipment and vehicles like the tank in the photo above. I was a little surprised that there was almost absolutely no mention of the Holocaust but since there was a large number of elementary school groups, the museum probably decided to tone down the atrocities of the war for all age groups.

On the way to the Normandy beaches we stopped in Bayeux to see the famous Tapestry. Ok, taking photos wasn't allowed but we did it anyway.This tapestry is over 1000 years old and in several scenes tells the story of how William the Conqueror took power in England in the year 1066. Not only it this thing really old but it's really really long too! It's 70 meters long (229 feet!). Très impressionnant!

Next we visited two of the American landing beaches during D-Day, June 6, 1944. We visited Omaha Beach and Pointe du Hoc. Here are a few photos:The Pointe du Hoc was really impressive. There were tons of German bunkers that had been abandoned, one was even in pieces. There were also hundreds of craters in the ground from the dropping of the bombs during Operation Overload.Well voilà, that was all of the highlights of my vacation in Normandy! Hope you enjoyed!